Anne wrote:
> As a soon-to-graduate undergrad, I will join Christine as a token
>young'un - and admit that I have poor perspective on the 'higher level'
>issues, but still wish to comment. Ideally these interactions should
>be
>gender neutral, because of coure ideally, women getting equal share in
>science shouldn't be an issue. But it is, so we move on. I think,
>from
>my perspective as an undergrad, that I (and many of my friends), feel
>more
>comfortable with a woman supervisor. And it seems to me, especially
>from
>reading this group, that many of the women in the higher levels prefer
>to
>act as a mentor to the younger women coming up. Why shouldn't it
>follow
>that the predominantly male senior faculty find it easier to mentor the
>young men?
>
>>Sticking my keyboard where it doesn't belong,
>Anne
>That would probably be OK, if the number of female grad students (about
50%) matched the number of female senior faculty (less than 10%).
Obviously just doing the math, we can't all work for same gender PIs.
Besides, I think there is an element of learning how the other half
thinks to this (for both faculty AND students), and think that the
ability to interact in a gender neutral manner is critical to success
in science and life.
That aside, I've been thinking about this feedback thing a lot lately.
The person I chose to be my outsider examiner (from another
institution) on my thesis is well known, and people who have worked for
this scientist or who were in the same department in grad school warn
me that this scientist has a reputation for crucifying people on their
orals-especially trying to get them to break down and cry. I did not
know this when I made the choice, but 2 different people who don't know
each other told me the crying thing, and three other senior faculty at
different institutions just described this person as "tough".
In light of this, I've been thinking a bit about what grad school has
done to me emotionally. When I started, you could make me cry if you
told me I was stupid, any undergrad could do this, what's wrong with
you, don't you have any brains at all? (all of these were said by
either my PI or a post-doc). Six years later, I hardly bat an eyelash
at this kind of abuse, because I've learned what I know and don't know,
and not to be ashamed of what I don't know (I believe that being ashamed
of what I didn't know is what upset me so much-as if lack of knowledge
was a moral failure). Plus I've seen brillant people stumble with
experiments, so I know inability to get something to work doesn't
necessarily mean total failure as a scientist.
I agree with Susan that science has become hypercritical;three
examples come immediately to mind.
I can't remember the last journal club I attended where the purpose of
the presenter wasn't to tear the paper to shreds. The last time I
presented a paper without tearing it to shreds, my audience was vaguely
nervous and so we spent 10 minutes at the end talking about how it
couldn't possibly be as nice as the authors reported (!)
The best advice I heard going into my orals was to remember that the
examiners don't care so much what you know-they want to know what you
don't know, as so will keep changing the subject if you show competence
until they find one you trip on.
And all advice about grant writing I've ever heard says that the
reviewers, because of the number of good projects is much higher than
the number that can be funded, tend to look for reasons NOT to fund,
not look for what's right.
I find I'm not as afraid of my thesis defense as I could be given the
rumours I've heard, because I EXPECT to be torn to threads-as if that's
the nature of the game. (Isn't that why they call it a defense?) But
I also don't expect to be reduced to tears because I don't take it
personally anymore, and when I do, I get angry, not shamed.
Is this thicker skin scientific maturity or cynicism? Should it be like
this?
Not sure I should even be asking these questions,
*****************************************************
Julia Frugoli
Dartmouth College
visiting grad student at
Texas A&M University
Department of Biological Sciences
College Station, TX 77843
409-845-0663
FAX 409-847-8805
"Evil is best defined as militant ignorance."
Dr. M. Scott Peck*****************************************************
